Back Issue #36 by TwoMorrows Publishing

This issue: WRIGHTSON • DeZUNIGA • ISABELLA & AYERS

r 2009 Octobe

N$o6..3965

82658 27762

MORBIUS • VAMPIRELLA ≈ FRANKENSTEIN ≥ SWAMP THING Ω ARCANE & UN-MEN GOLEM ≈ IT, THE LIVING COLOSSUS ≥ MAN-BAT Ω PATCHWORK MAN ≈ DR. THIRTEEN

THE

BATCAVE C O M P A N I O N NOW SHIPPING! Batman. Is he the campy Caped Crusader? Or the grim Gotham Guardian? Both, as The Batcave Companion reveals. On the brink of cancellation in 1963, Batman was rescued by DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz, who, abetted by several talented writers and artists, gave the hero a much-needed “New Look” which soon catapulted Batman to multimedia stardom. In the next decade, when Batman required another fresh start, Schwartz once again led a team of creators that returned the hero to his “creature of the night” roots. Writers Michael Eury (The Krypton Companion, The Justice League Companion) and Michael Kronenberg (Spies, Vixens, and Masters of Kung Fu: The Art of Paul Gulacy) unearth the stories behind the stories of both Batman’s “New Look” and Bronze Age (1970s) comic-book eras through incisive essays, invaluable issue-by-issue indexes, and insightful commentary from many of the visionaries responsible for and inspired by Batman’s 1960s and 1970s adventures: Neal Adams, Michael Allred, Terry Austin, Mike W. Barr, Steve Englehart, Mike Friedrich, Mike Grell, Carmine Infantino, Joe Giella, Adam Hughes, Sheldon Moldoff, Will Murray, Dennis O’Neil, Bob Rozakis, Mark Waid, Len Wein, and Bernie Wrightson. Featuring 240 art- and info-packed pages, The Batcave Companion is a must-have examination of two of the most influential periods in Batman’s 70-year history.

Written by Back Issue’s

MICHAEL EURY & MICHAEL KRONENBERG ISBN 978-1-893905-78-8 $26.95 in the U.S. plus shipping Batman, Robin, and all related characters and indicia are TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. Used with permission.

TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

Volume 1, Number 36 October 2009

The Retro Comics Experience!

Celebrating the Best Comics of the '70s, '80s, '90s, and Today! EDITOR Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow

BACK SEAT DRIVER: Editorial by Michael Eury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 DESIGNER Rich J. Fowlks

INTERVIEW: Bernie Wrightson: Perfectly Frank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 The master of the macabre discusses his obsession with Mary Shelley’s tale, and more FLASHBACK: The Monster of Frankenstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 Mike Ploog, Roy Thomas, and Gary Friedrich recall the Marvelizing of the Monster

COVER ARTIST Earl Norem

TIMELINE: Frankenstein in Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 No pitchfork or torch is needed to hunt down these comics appearances of ol’ Flattop

PROOFREADERS John Morrow and Eric Nolen-Weathington SPECIAL THANKS Arthur Adams Michael Aushenker Dick Ayers Frank Balas Alex Boney Jerry Boyd Michael Browning Bruce Buchanan Jose Cabrera Piers Casimir Dewey Cassell Ernie Colón Gerry Conway Nicola Cuti Darren Davis Tony and Tina DeZuniga Mark DiFruscio Joshua Dysart Ray Falcoa Shane Foley Gary Friedrich Mike Friedrich Grand Comic-Book Database Larry Guidry Allan Harvey Mike Hawthorne Ola Hellsten Heritage Comics Auctions Tony Isabella Michael Wm. Kaluta Len Kaminski

David Anthony Kraft Kirk Langstrom Paul Levitz Alan Light Dave Louapre Michael Mantlo Marvel Comics Mark McKenna David Michelinie Mike Mignola Ian Millsted Nightscream William F. Nolan Eamon O’Donoghue Jimmy Palmiotti Martin Pasko Mike Ploog Howard Post John Romita, Sr. Bob Rozakis Alex Saviuk Bill Schelly Philip Schweier Steve Skeates Anthony Snyder Roy Thomas Rick Veitch Len Wein John Wells John Whalen Mel Whitlow Alex Wright Bernie Wrightson

FLASHBACK: Taste the Blood of Vampirella . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 Lordy, Lordy, Vampi’s 40, and BI eyes the vivacious vixen’s history BRING ON THE BAD GUYS: Morbius, the Living Vampire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 How Morbius went from Spider-Man supervillain to Marvel monster-hero FLASHBACK: Mud, Moss, and Mayhem: The Original Swamp Thing’s Latter Days . . .35 Nestor Redondo and the men who brought life to Swampy after Bernie Wrightson FLASHBACK: Monsters (Almost) Unleashed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 Revisit 1975, the year the Patchwork Man and Man-Bat briefly became solo stars ART GALLERY: Monster Rally Gallery! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 A cool and creepy collection of creature features by Starlin, Kaluta, Wrightson, and others BRING ON THE BAD GUYS: Major Arcana: The Life (and Death) Story of Anton Arcane and the Un-Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 Exhuming the legend of the Swamp Thing foe who won’t stay dead BEYOND CAPES: Follow You … For I Am Dr. Thirteen! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60 The real star of The Phantom Stranger steps into BACK ISSUE’s spotlight INTERVIEW: Dining with the DeZunigas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67 Pull up a chair with superstar artist Tony DeZuniga and his delightful wife, Tina PRO2PRO: Tony Isabella and Dick Ayers’ It! The Living Colossus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69 The writer/artist team and their recollections of the short-lived Colossus comeback FLASHBACK: Golem, Golem … Gone! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72 Marvel’s take on an old Hebrew legend WHAT THE--?!: Power Records’ Monster Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 Peter Pan Records’ not-so-kid-friendly Marvel Monster book-and-record sets GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: The Secret History of All-American Comics, Inc. . . . .82 “In and Out of Darkness,” concluding Bob Rozakis’ fantasy comics history BACK TALK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88 Reader feedback on “New World Order” issue #34 BACK ISSUE™ is published bimonthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor, 118 Edgewood Avenue NE, Concord, NC 28025. E-mail: euryman@gmail.com. Six-issue subscriptions: $40 Standard US, $54 First Class US, $66 Canada, $90 Surface International, $108 Airmail International. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover art by Earl Norem. Morbius and Werewolf by Night TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2009 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing. BACK ISSUE is a TM of TwoMorrows Publishing. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING. Monsters Issue

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COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg

Hi, Dewey! Hey, thanks to you (or whoever did it) for sending me the new issues with your splendid, beautifully researched piece on Logan’s Run (the #1 highlight of my 55-year career.) You may want to do a follow-up based on a three-year contract I just signed with Bluewater Productions for a six-issue run of Logan’s Run. As a comics buff, I look forward to the new series (and Logan is still very much alive at Warner/Silver Pictures). So ... after 12 years we may yet see a new screen Logan... I have seven large scrapbooks filled with Logan material (comics, posters, stills, etc.) and I have the original art cover for Marvel’s Logan’s Run #1 framed on the wall. (Pérez art, of course.) If you ever get up this way I’ll be glad to share ’em with you. Again, my thanks for a wonderful article on Mr. L. Happy to add it to my collection! Best always! William F. Nolan

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That’s great news! Here’s the buzz from Bluewater Productions: “The original Logan’s Run depicted a dystopian future of the 23rd Century, enjoyed by the young (reach a certain age and it’s time to die). This comic adaptation, entitled Logan’s Run: Lastday, revisits Nolan’s literary Logan trilogy and moves forward with new adventures written by Paul J. Salamoff with art by Daniel Gete. Logan’s Run: Lastday is scheduled for a November 2009 release.” Special thanks to Darren Davis for sharing this art with us.

Logan’s Run TM & © MGM.

With this issue, we’ve got six years of BACK ISSUE under our editorial belt! (So that explains why I’ve had to go up one waist size…) Pesky typos and occasional factual errors aside, our magazine’s well oiled now, and our readership is loyal and consistent. On that topic, I hereby deputize you, the regular BI reader, for a special mission (just don’t expect a badge). Almost every issue I receive a letter enthusiastically stating, “I just discovered BACK ISSUE.” Many comics shops, especially smaller ones, don’t carry our magazine. Some larger shops purchase only enough copies to fill orders. This means that there are potentially thousands of readers who haven’t yet discovered us. So please help us spread the word about BACK ISSUE. Hammer your comic-shop dealer to stock BACK ISSUE (many shop owners are from the BI era—they might nostaligically appreciate the magazine). Recommend it to your fellow fans. And if you can afford it, buy a few extra issues to share with friends to turn them on to us. (I can use phrases like “turn them on” in a retro magazine.) And don’t worry, this isn’t a veiled “we’re on the verge of cancellation message”—our sales remain healthy, but I’m convinced our audience would be larger if readers simply knew we existed. Thanks for your help! If you are one of those newer readers and are wondering where Tomb of Dracula, Godzilla, Ghost Rider, and some of your other favorite frightening funnybooks are in this “Monsters” issue, check out our back issues for BI #6 (“Horror”) and 15 (“Weird Heroes”). Speaking of issues past, two final remarks about our “Teen Heroes” issue, #33: We weren’t aware at press time that Jonathan Mueller is the owner of the original design art for Kitty Pryde by John Byrne and wish to acknowledge him in print. And regarding the article on The Man Called Nova, Marv Wolfman writes to tell us: “There’s one mistake. [John] Buscema did not do the cover to #1. Rich Buckler did. I can easily understand the confusion as he was aping John but the B/S on the cover was Buckler/Sinnott.” Thanks, Marv! Regular BI writer Dewey Cassell recently received the following letter and kindly shares it with us:

Michael Eury

Philip Schweier

“There’s nothing worse than an unhappy horror artist,” says Bernie Wrightson. Fortunately, Wrightson is pretty satisfied with his career which spans 40 years. “It’s all rewarding as long as there are monsters in it and it’s a horror story, because those are the things I love,” he told an audience at the 2008 Dragon-Con in Atlanta, Georgia. His passion for the genre resulted in his most personal project to date, an illustrated version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Over the course of seven or eight years, he assembled a collection of about 60–65 illustrations for the novel. “This was my labor of love,” Wrightson beams proudly during a later interview. “I think the seed was planted when I was very young, and it kind of grew and grew. By the mid-’70s, to carry the metaphor, it blossomed.”

INFLUENCES According to Wrightson, he has been a Frankenstein fan since the age of seven, while growing up in Baltimore, Maryland. “I just fell in love the movies. Universal had a whole package of old monster movies that they released to TV. It was the time of the horror host on Shock Theater. There was Zacherly in New York, and our version of Zacherly was a guy named Dr. Lucifer. He had a lot of the same schtick. He had a coffin where his dead wife slept and … the usual stuff, the tombstones and the cobwebs. Very jokey things, and he would occasionally break into the movie with some kind of schtick related to what was happening in the movie. It was kid’s stuff.” He also became a big fan of the EC’s horror comics and its stable of artists. “I liked Jack Davis, Johnny Craig, and George Evans, Reed Crandall. Everybody who worked for EC was just top-notch. They were the best people in the business.” One artist stood out. “For me … the creepiest story was always drawn by Graham Ingels. Ghastly Graham Ingels. And to this day, if you pick up Vault of Horror, Crypt of Terror, or Haunt of Fear, and you look at any of those, and I guarantee, the Graham Ingels story,

That’s My Boy! Blacks, hatching, and intricate linework—Bernie Wrightson hallmarks—make the artist the perfect candidate to adapt the Mary Shelley classic. Page 37 from the Frankenstein graphic novel. © 2009 Bernie Wrightson and Darkwoods Productions.

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Beginnings: First sale: “Nightmaster” in Showcase #83 (1969) First published art: House of Mystery #179 (1969)

Milestones: Comics: House of Mystery / Swamp Thing / Frankenstein / Creepshow / Batman: The Cult / The Weird / Captain Sternn / Batman/Aliens / City of Others / Dead, She Said / many memorable covers Film: character designs for Creepshow / Ghostbusters / Spider-Man / Serenity / Ghost Rider / The Mist

Works in Progress: Frankenstein (25th anniversary edition hardcover, Dark Horse, 2008) / DC Comics Classics Library: Roots of the Swamp Thing

Cyberspace: www.wrightsonart.com

Bernie Wrightson Photo courtesy of Bernie Wrightson.

just looking at it—you don’t even have to read it, just look at the pictures—and it’s the creepiest stuff in the book.” Such artists as Ingels and Frank Frazetta inspired the young Wrightson to pursue art on his own. His earliest lessons came from a Saturday morning television program featuring artist Jon Gnagy. “It was a half-hour show and he would, in the course of the show, draw a picture starting with basic shapes—circle, square, triangle. He would show you how to turn the triangle into a cone and turn a rectangle into a cylinder, and, by finding a light source and making a shadow, turn the circle into a globe. He said, ‘If you can draw these three basic shapes, you can draw anything. This is what all drawing is based on.’”

ART SCHOOL However, it wasn’t until his teen years that, despite a few hurdles, Wrightson began thinking of a career in art. “There were no art classes in Baltimore at the time, in the 1960s, when I got out of high school. I tried to find a college that taught commercial art and there was nothing. I think the University of Maryland taught fine art, but I wasn’t interested in that. I wanted to learn how to draw, you know, commercially. There was nothing at the time. This was years and years before anybody thought of teaching comics or just illustration in schools. But I found a correspondence course in Connecticut, the Famous Artists’ School, so I signed up for that.” Today, taking art courses by mail may sound rather suspect, but at the time, it was the only option for Wrightson. “It was the only place at the time that had what I was looking for and I still have the course books. I look at them from time to time and it’s still the best art training that I’ve ever seen. There are a lot of imitators, or there used to be. There were a lot of correspondence schools but I never looked into any of those. I just got lucky and found the best one.” While the Famous Artists’ School didn’t offer a degree, that was never a concern for the budding illustrator. “This was just a personal best kind of thing and I wasn’t interested in a degree anyway,” says Wrightson. “I always felt that for an artist, the best thing you can show is your portfolio. An artist is judged by his work, not by how much he studied or what grades he got.” Embarking on his art career after high school, Wrightson took a job with the Baltimore Sun, which lasted less than a year. “It was kind of sobering. I thought I’d be getting a job where I’d be drawing all the time, but most of it was re-touching photos or doing paste-ups. But the experience was valuable. It was not what I particularly wanted to do, but I learned a lot from it.”

Peeking Through the Scream Door Bernie Wrightson’s cover art for the 1971 fanzine Scream Door #1 shows his affinity toward Mary Shelley’s patchwork man. According to Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com), who kindly provided this scan, the bottom panel of this art was also used in the publication Berni Wrightson: A Look Back. Art © 2009 Bernie Wrightson.

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A TRIP TO ORLANDO Wrightson then began looking for work in the comicbook field. “I went to comic-book conventions, basically, and just started showing my stuff around to anybody who wanted to look, and some of the people eventually who looked at it were editors at DC, and they said, ‘You know, you could work in comics. You’re good enough.’ I had to think about that for a while—maybe a month—and then I moved to New York.” By now it was the late 1960s, and DC’s horror line consisted of House of Mystery and House of Secrets. Both followed the old EC anthology format, “hosted” by a couple of ghoulish type of characters. “I just happened to be very lucky, in that a year or so before that they had started House of Mystery. And, of course, it was under the Comics Code Authority, so you couldn’t really deal with stuff like vampires and werewolves,” Wrighston says. “The Code was very strict about that the really horrific kind of stuff, like zombies. You couldn’t use the word ‘horror’ in a title; really, really strange, strict rules. Joe Orlando was the editor of House of Mystery, and he was one of the original EC artists. His idea was, ‘Well, if we can’t have really good, gritty horror stories, you know, if we can’t do it with the content, let’s find artists who can draw stuff that looks creepy, and just make the books look like horror comics.’” The short-story format helped novice writers and artists learn the ropes before moving on to higher-profile books such as DC’s superhero titles. “I never related much to superheroes,” confesses Wrightson. “I read Superman and Batman and Fantastic Four and all that stuff when I was younger. It was fun to read but it was nothing that I ever really wanted to draw. Superheroes were somehow not real to me ... compared to werewolves and mummies and stuff. I can buy that, but I can’t buy the X-Men. But that’s just me.” DC Comics’ horror line expanded slowly, with titles such as The Unexpected and The Witching Hour added by the early 1970s. Each issue would feature a handful of stories, perhaps eight to 12 pages long. One of the most popular of these, illustrated by Wrightson and written by his “partner in grime” Len Wein, was “Swamp Thing,” which premiered in House of Secrets #92 (July 1971), then made the leap into a title of its own. [Swamp Thing vol. 1 #1 was cover-dated Oct.–Nov. 1972.] Wrightson explains, “Part of the fun is following a character and watching him develop and seeing which direction he’s going to follow. It just seems that most of the time people jump in with that initial enthusiasm and after a while the characters begin to pull you along as a creator, and the characters begin to tell you what do with them.

“We were pretty much making [Swamp Thing] up as we went along. It was basically a monster-of-the-month kind of thing, like the Kolchak/Night Stalker TV show. It was the same hero, but a hero needs someone to fight and it would be another monster. But I’ll take the blame for that. I was looking for stuff that was fun to draw, so maybe Len had other ideas about developing the character and taking it in another direction, or maybe I held him back because I wanted to have another monster. I never talked with him about that, but looking back and rereading it, it looks a little suspicious now.” Swamp Thing eventually stumbled once Wrightson and Wein departed after the tenth issue, and was canceled after #24 (Aug.–Sept. 1976). Revived in the early 1980s, it led to two feature films and a syndicated television series, as well as a Saturday morning cartoon show. Since the Swamp Thing was created under DC Comics’ work-for-hire policy, Wrightson and Wein saw only token appreciation for their creation.

TM & © DC Comics.

Swamp Thing, Take One When Wrightson and writer Len Wein introduced Swamp Thing in House of Secrets #92—the moody title page from which is seen at right—they had no inkling that they had created a horror and pop-culture icon. The issue’s cover is seen in the upper right. TM & © 2009 DC Comics.

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In the early 1970s, horror comics were experiencing an explosion in popularity. Not since the days of EC Comics had horror been so popular. At Marvel Comics there were the Ghost Rider, Werewolf by Night, Son of Satan, Satana, the Zombie, the Man-Thing, the Living Mummy, the Scarecrow, Dracula, and the Monster of Frankenstein. First and foremost of the Marvel horror explosion was Werewolf by Night, premiering in Marvel Spotlight #2 (Feb. 1972). Then came Dracula in his own series, Tomb of Dracula, which lasted 70 issues. Next came the flaming-skull-headed biker Ghost Rider, who tried out in Marvel Spotlight before blazing into his own title. Then Marvel’s version of Frankenstein burst onto the scene.

IT’S ALIVE!! The Frankenstein Monster is the creation of Mary Shelley, who wrote her famous novel in 1818 and titled it Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. The Monster was popularized in the 1931 Universal Pictures movie starring Boris Karloff as the creature. Karloff’s Monster is the image most associated with Frankenstein. But it was almost 42 years between the first Frankenstein movie and Marvel’s Frankenstein comics series. [Editor’s note: See this issue’s Frankenstein in Comics Timeline for a neckjolting jaunt through the Monster’s many comic-book appearances.] Marvel’s Frankenstein Monster actually first appeared in X-Men #40 (Jan. 1968), but that character was an android version with superpowers. The “real” Frankenstein Monster appeared in a cameo

“My Lord!” is Right! Mike Ploog’s freakish interpretation of the Marvel-published Monster, in pencil form, from page 3 of issue #6 (Oct. 1973). Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). (inset) Mary Shelley’s novel. © 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Michael Browning

Beyond Karloff The challenge of artist Ploog and Marvel Comics was to make their Monster reminiscent of actor Boris Karloff (left) but unique as a Marvel character (as seen in this detail from the cover of Monster of Frankenstein #3.) (below) Marvel’s first issue. Karloff Frankenstein © 2009 Universal Pictures. Ploog Frankenstein © 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

in Silver Surfer #7 (Aug. 1969). Then, in late 1972, the Monster of Frankenstein got his own, self-titled Marvel Comics series. Monster of Frankenstein #1 (Jan. 1973), or, as it’s titled in the indicia on the splash page, simply Frankenstein, was written by Gary Friedrich, drawn by Mike Ploog, and edited by Roy Thomas. Series editor Thomas was first invited to write the book, to be teamed with artist Ploog, who was already making a name for himself with his horror work in the new Werewolf by Night and Ghost Rider series. “I’d been working with Dick Giordano adapting Bram Stoker’s Dracula [in the black-and-white magazine Vampire Tales], so I wanted to start with the [Mary] Shelley Frankenstein story, then bring [the Monster of Frankenstein] into the present,” Thomas says. “But eager as I was to work with Mike Ploog on Frankenstein, I just didn’t have time. “So I turned the project over to Gary [Friedrich], who did a fine job with it.” This was the second teaming of Gary Friedrich and Mike Ploog. With horror comics being hot and Friedrich and Ploog even hotter after kickstarting Ghost Rider, Marvel turned to its star writer/artist combo to produce another fright-filled hit. Instead of delving deep into the occult like Ghost Rider and Son of Satan, Marvel decided to go with an old favorite. “I don’t remember whose idea it was to do a Frankenstein book,” Friedrich says. “But at this time, Marvel was cranking up the gears on the monster mags, and if you’re doing to do a monster comic, what better character than Franky?” Ploog says that because horror was popular, Marvel decided to try the Frankenstein Monster in his own title. “Werewolf by Night had became a successful title and was selling very well and DC’s horror comic line was doing well,” the artist recalls, “so I think Stan [Lee] and the boys decided to expand into that market.” Ploog used a drawing of the Frankenstein Monster by John Romita, Sr. as the basis for his own rendition and turned the Monster into a creature so fearful, yet at the same time one so pitiful and in search of his humanity—or eternal rest. Friedrich wasn’t involved in choosing the appropriate look for the Monster, but loved Ploog’s version. “I don’t remember Romita doing the original drawing, though probably he did since he was there in the office and could show roughs to Stan [Lee] and Roy as he worked, which would have been a lot faster than waiting for Mike to draw them and then bring or mail them into the office,” Friedrich says. “I don’t recall being greatly involved in the project once it was decided to do an adaptation Monsters Issue

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time Frankenstein came out, I’d moved back to Missouri [from New York]. The editorial reaction was the same as it always was for John’s stuff: ‘He’s done it again!’” The issue after Buscema’s departure, #11, drawn by Bob Brown, was Friedrich’s final Frankenstein tale. “I really enjoyed Frankenstein, because I related to that naïve monster wandering around a world he had no knowledge of—an outsider seeing everything through the eyes of a child.”

Monster Gone Wild! Original cover art to Frankenstein Monster #13 (Nov. 1974), illustrated in the Mighty Marvel Manner by penciler Ron Wilson and inker Mike Esposito. Courtesy of Heritage. © 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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FRANKENSTEIN REANIMATED With issue #12 (Sept. 1974), writer Doug Moench took over, along with artist Val Mayerik, and the duo picked up right where Friedrich left off. Moench brought the Monster into the modern day the same way Captain America was brought from the World War II era into the Silver Age of comics: by freezing him in suspended animation inside a block of ice that was found by men on a boat. After the Monster thawed and awakened from his comatose state, he dealt with the harshness of the modern-day world and was again misunderstood and believed to be a murderous beast. Val Mayerik’s style merged elements of Michael Kaluta’s fine line with Bernie Wrightson’s organic art to brilliantly illustrate what would become the Monster’s last seven issues. After a crossover with the Werewolf by Night in Giant-Size Werewolf #2 (Oct. 1974), the Monster battled the Night-Creature and ICON in issues #13–15. Len Wein took over as editor in #15. In Frankenstein Monster #16 (May 1975), the Monster fought a robot called the Berserker, which he later befriended. After the Monster tried to help the robot find humanity, the two were captured by the Children of the Damned in the last issue of the series, #18, which was written by Bill Mantlo and featured a Val Mayerik cover inked by Bernie Wrightson. The Monster learned that these misshapen “children” were his “family,” their creator being Victoria von Frankenstein, the great-granddaughter of Victor von Frankenstein. The series ended abruptly with the introduction of the creature to his father’s descendent, bringing the Monster’s quest to an end. “At the start, the book sold well,” says Frankenstein’s original editor, Roy Thomas, who continues, “The series ended because sales weren’t good enough.” During Marvel’s monster mania, the Frankenstein Monster also appeared in the blackand-white magazines Monsters Unleashed (1973–1975) and The Legion of Monsters (1975). Gary Friedrich and John Buscema produced two Frankenstein stories for Unleashed, while Doug Moench and Val Mayerik did four for Unleashed and one for Legion. The Frankenstein Monster has turned up throughout the Marvel Universe since the series’ end in September 1975. In the 2001–2002 miniseries Bloodstone, starring Ulysses Bloodstone’s daughter, Elsa, the creature was featured prominently and was referred to as Adam the Frankenstein Monster. An intelligent clone of the Monster was a member of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Paranomal Containment Unit called the Howling Commandos in the 2005–2006 miniseries Nick Fury’s Howling Commandos. Matewan, WV native MICHAEL BROWNING is an award-winning newspaper editor, writer, and photographer, and is an advisor with The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide. He’s contributed to Rolling Stone, BACK ISSUE, Comics Buyer’s Guide, Comic Book Marketplace, Rough Stuff, and Charlton Spotlight.

compiled by

Michael Eury

1940

1945

1948

Dick Briefer’s “Frankenstein” starts in Prize Comics.

Briefer’s monster-hero goes solo in Frankenstein Comics.

Mary Shelley’s tale is adapted in Classic Comics #26.

Batman and Robin meet Frankie in Detective #135.

1961

1962

1964

Bizarro meets Frankenstein in Superman #142.

Black-and-white mag Castle of Frankenstein begins.

Dell’s Frankenstein #1 loosely adapts the 1931 movie.

Model-building craze spawns this MAD cover.

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All covers © their respective owners.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has been adapted, interpreted, borrowed from, parodied, and ripped off in more comic books than a single edition of BACK ISSUE can contain. We’ve dug through the comics morgue for this sampling of covers featuring our favorite reanimated monster (and a few of his distant cousins)…

In the proud history of comic-magazine monsters, there’s never been a creation quite like Vampirella. Her timing on the national scene was not fortuitous. She followed the slinky and beautiful host Vampira, who in turn ushered, in a manner of speaking, sitcom scarequeens Lily Munster and Morticia Addams. Hammer Films, over in Great Britain, had already pushed the envelope with sexy, seductive vampire brides played by Barbara Shelley (Dracula: Prince of Darkness, 1966) and Marianne Harcourt (Kiss of the Vampire, 1963). By the end of the 1960s, Vampirella’s time had come. And publisher James Warren was glad to have her. His young company had seen some tough times following the initial successes of its illustrated ventures, Creepy and Eerie, but financial problems led to more reprints than many of its faithful readers could bear. By 1969, things had improved slightly, but a shot in the arm was needed. That “shot in the arm” morphed into a bite in the neck. A full-page house ad drawn by Tony Williamsune appeared in the back of Creepy #28 (Aug. 1969). Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie, Warren’s two narrators of the “nauseating novelettes” the company had been doing, were trembling in fear! “She was coming!” Eerie threatened to scream if his uncle let her through the door. In a follow-up ad in the next issue, Vampirella (taken from a Frank Frazetta drawing) strutted her stuff before her still-rattled “family members.” Vampi was a knockout—in more ways than one! Her first issue boasted an unforgettable Frazetta cover, which had to delight longtime readers who’d been clamoring for the artist’s return to Warren. “Illustrated Tales to Bewitch and Bedevil You”—this seductive spiel appeared above the cover’s logo, but more to the point was the further announcement just inside, “Captivating Comics about Fantastic Females!” This was this new title’s subtle secret. These new “excursions into evil” were specifically designed around the enticement of the femme fatale with supernatural specialties. This was made to order for awkward pre-teens (myself included). In ’69–’70, my age group was far too unsophisticated for Esquire, a bit too young for Playboy, and generally too unsure of our rarely tested manhood to read … uh, romance comics (openly, at least). Happily, we now had Vampirella. “We knew we had a hit in her,” Forrest J. Ackerman, one of her creators, told me as he signed my Vampirella and Famous Monsters mags at the San Diego Comic-Con in the late ’90s. “She was sexy … and sensational!” he laughingly added. She sure was.

Necking Vampirella gets ready to put the bite on an unlucky (or lucky—depends upon how you look at it!) victim in this outstanding unpublished ’90s illustration by José “Pepe” González. All artwork and photos in this article were provided by Dewey Cassell and Jerry Boyd. © 2009 Harris Publications, Inc.

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Jerry Boyd

New Ghoul in Town! The delectable Vampirella made her first appearance in this 1969 house ad in Creepy #29. This knee-knocking illo was done by Tony Williamsune. (below) Three great impressarios of horror (left to right): Vincent Price, James Warren, and Forrest J. Ackerman, the latter of whom helped create Vampirella. © 1969 Warren Publishing. Vampirella © 2009 Harris Publications, Inc.

LOVE AT FIRST BITE In her first appearance, beautifully realized by Tom Sutton and nicely written by Ackerman, the young bloodsucker was a carefree flirt/tease. She lived on the planet Draculon (among other permutations). This was a planet of bloodthirsty vampires, but their thirst was easily sated by the rivers of blood (!!) that were natural to the landscape. If any prospective readers had been casual about picking up and thumbing through that historic premiere issue, Sutton’s opening splash with the gorgeous young bat-woman taking a long shower (in blood, yet!) had to be the answer to their doldrums! Vampi’s partially (but carefully concealed) nude body spoke volumes about thrills to come. Other creature queens to follow drawn by Neal Adams, William Barry, Jack Sparling, Billy Graham, Reed Crandall, Sanho Kim, and Dick Piscopo would follow this standard. Their stories of cave girls, futuristic lady space explorers, warrior women, alluring aliens, sea goddesses, and female werewolves came in various states of undress with come-hither smiles that hadn’t been seen in comics ever. Vampi (as she quickly came to be known) bespoke danger, but she was just out to have fun in her first adventure. An intrusion on her world by some of those pesky, gotta-explore-all-of-space Earthmen got the action going. (Ackerman was always partial to science fiction.) The spacemen fire on the curious bat-woman flying above them, but Vampirella’s attack is better coordinated and a few fang-tipped bites later—and it’s all over. Or is it? The vamp discovers that the lifeblood of Draculon is the lifeblood of these space travelers! With a laugh, she readies herself to return in their spaceship to the planet of their origin. Her first adventure was over, but she stepped into the traditional horror-mag narrator mode right after that, posing provocatively on the opening story pages for maximum appeal. And she had appeal to spare! The artists and writers certainly did their part, but the competition couldn’t match up. DC, Marvel, Gold Key, and Charlton had horror-mystery comics in 1969, of course, but the Comics Code ensured that they couldn’t bring “sex” with a capital “S” with them. Publisher Warren could, and did. Jim Warren told Comic Book Artist’s readers (in the superb fourth issue), “We [Ackerman and Warren] had both seen the movie Barberella together and had loved it. I carefully outlined exactly what I wanted: A modern-day setting but something with a mystique of vampires, Transylvania; something legendary—and Vampirella was born. Think about Bram Stoker and what he did with Dracula: Horror and sex. I didn’t want Wonder Woman. I didn’t want a superhero type. I wanted a modern setting. Sexy, but not naked or bare-breasted.” Mr. Warren knew his audience. Readers sensed a turnaround. The reprints were slowly eased out as veterans like Reed Crandall, Monsters Issue

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No one can ever accuse Stan Lee and Steve Ditko of getting off to a slow start with The Amazing Spider-Man. Nearly all of the web-slinger’s great villains were created during the book’s first three years under its creators. But Morbius the Living Vampire is one of the few later creations who has managed to join the pantheon of great Spider-Man foes, alongside the likes of the Green Goblin, Dr. Octopus, Mysterio, Electro, the Vulture, and Kraven the Hunter. Created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Gil Kane, Morbius has become a Marvel mainstay who at one point even held down his own monthly series.

SCIENTIFIC ORIGIN Morbius isn’t a true vampire, at least not in the traditional sense, although he shares many traits with the classic vampires of film and fiction. Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr. Michael Morbius learned he was dying from a rare blood disease. He attempted to find a cure, creating a serum derived from vampire bats. The formula did cure his illness, but it also transformed him into a chalk-white, fanged creature of the night. He also developed superhuman powers: enhanced strength and the ability to glide on the air currents. In this respect, there was little difference between Morbius and the traditional vampire. Although he was still alive, Morbius discovered he needed to drink human blood to survive. He also shared the vampire’s aversion to light, although sunlight did not destroy him as it would a supernatural vampire. He also lacked the undead vampire’s aversion to garlic and religious icons. However, artist and co-creator Gil Kane gave the Living Vampire a more conventional supervillain’s costume, rather than the gothic garb most typically associated with literary and movie vampires. Morbius’ introduction in Amazing Spider-Man #101 (Oct. 1971) was noteworthy for more than just the introduction of an instantly classic supervillain. It also marked the first time in the book’s storied history that a writer other than Stan Lee penned the script for the web-slinger’s adventures.

Monster Supervillain Detail from the cover art to Spectacular Spider-Man #7 (June 1977), penciled by Dave Cockrum and inked by Al Milgrom. Courtesy of Anthony Snyder (www.anthonysnyderart.com). © 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Bruce Buchanan

Lee was working on a screenplay for a sciencefiction movie at the time, so he needed to take a break from his heavy workload as a writer for Marvel. For this monumental passing of the torch, Lee chose his righthand man, Roy Thomas, to be the new Amazing Spider-Man scribe. “Actually, I wanted to do Fantastic Four, but Stan wanted me to do Spider-Man, so I did Spider-Man,” Thomas says. “I got to write Fantastic Four a few years later and I enjoyed writing Spider-Man, so it all worked out.” Attributing Morbius’ origin to science, not sorcery, was in part a creative, innovative twist on a classic fictional monster. But it also represented an opportunity to take advantage of recent changes in the Comics Code Authority, which governed content in comic books aimed at a youthful readership. For years, the Comics Code declared, “Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited.” So using vampires— or any undead creatures—in mainstream comics had been out of the question. (A similar concession was made in a Marvel Two-in-One story set in Haiti. The mindless, perhaps undead, creatures in the story were referred to as “zuvembies” rather than “zombies.”) But the Comics Code’s restrictions were somewhat loosened in the early 1970s and Lee wanted to capitalize by bringing in a vampire to the pages of Amazing Spider-Man. “We were talking about doing Dracula, but Stan wanted a costumed villain. Other than that, he didn’t specify what we should do,” Thomas says. “I deliberately wrote that issue a little differently than Stan would have. Maybe better, maybe worse, but different.” Lee also left Thomas with a compelling plot thread to resolve, as in the landmark Amazing Spider-Man #100, Spidey attempted to find a cure for his spider-powers, only to grow four additional arms! So Thomas started thinking about a possible vampire villain for Spider-Man, and how he could weave that into the storyline he inherited. He says he remembered a science-fiction film from his youth in which a man was turned into a vampire by radiation, not magic. That gave him the inspiration that Morbius should be a creature of science. As for the name “Morbius,” another 1950s sciencefiction film provided the inspiration, albeit inadvertently. A character in the film Forbidden Planet was named Dr. Morbius, and the name stuck in Thomas’ subconscious. He didn’t realize from where he had come up with the name until the book already was in print, he says.

ARMED AND DANGEROUS Amazing Spider-Man #101 picks up with Peter Parker trying to deal with the consequences of his failed attempt to cure his spider-powers. Now, he truly is a freak, unable to move in normal society. Peter responds to the unexpected turn of events with fear, anger and his trademark self-deprecating humor. “S’funny ... in pop fiction, the masked hero's always looking for a gimmick that'll ‘Strike terror into the hearts of evil-doers,’” he says. “The Shadow, Batman ... there was even a guy called the Spider once. Well, cheer up, web-spinner. You’ve got ’em all beat. And the only person you'll scare more than the crooks will be yourself.” He realizes that he can’t see Gwen Stacy, Aunt May, or the Daily Bugle staff until when—or if—he is able to rid himself of his four extra arms. So he calls Dr. Curt Connors, a.k.a. the Lizard, who knows a little something himself

about experiments gone wrong. Dr. Connors offers Spider-Man the use of his beach house in a remote section of Long Island. There, Spider-Man can hole up and look for a cure away from prying eyes. Meanwhile, the scene shifts to a ship floating off the New York coast. Several crew members have disappeared in recent days and the remaining crewmen place the blame on a goateed drifter they picked up shortly before the disappearances began. The man, Dr. Michael Morbius, is forced to flee and hide from the angry mob. However, when the sun goes down, Morbius assumes a far more dangerous persona— that of a living vampire! “But now, it is night once more—and the night belongs to me—to Morbius! For the darkness is a time for strange thirsts, and when Morbius thists—it must be quenched!,” Morbius says as he pulls in another victim. That night, he murders the ship’s entire crew before gliding to shore. Thomas says this introductory scene is a nod to a similar scene in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the definitive and certainly the most famous vampire novel ever written. Monsters Issue

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vampire. Slaughter was hired to kill Morbius by Simon Stroud, a former CIA agent. Another frequent villain was Basilisk, a demon who could paralyze his foes with a glance. The Morbius Basilisk had no connection to the 1970s villain of the same name. Morbius also was infected with a blood-borne demon known as Bloodlust. Eventually, Morbius freed himself of Bloodlust and killed the demon. The series lasted 32 issues, no small feat for a comic based on a one-time supervillain. The creative team of Linda Trusiani and Craig Gilmore provided the final stories of the run, which featured Morbius temporarily evolving into a more monstrous-looking creature, but without the usual bloodlust. Kaminski describes the birth of the Morbius series as “yet another example of the Spastic Hand Of Destiny leaving its dirty fingerprints all over my career. Not long after getting in the door at Marvel, I’d been secretly working on a pitch to revive the character for a year or two, Morbius having been (and remaining) one of my all-time favorites.

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“My subtle plan was to break in big on an established series—Iron Man, for instance—and once I was sufficiently established talk some hapless editor into letting me do Morbius. Meanwhile, the Ghost Rider revival took off, and the mandate came down to start soliciting proposals for relaunches of what I like to call ‘horror-flavored superhero books’—with Morbius being on the short list.” Acting on advice from friend and Ghost Rider scribe Howard Mackie, Kaminski then submitted his pitch to editor Bobbie Chase, and Morbius the Living Vampire was given the green light. Kaminski says the Living Vampire always has had a strong appeal, dating back to Roy Thomas’ original story. “Morbius is such a creature of utter extremes— constantly poised on the razor edge between homicide and suicide—I don’t see how any writer could fail to be facinated by him,” Kaminski says. “Not to mention he’s the Hero, the Mad Scientist, and the Monster all in one—how cool is that?” He says he still isn’t sure why Chase dismissed him from the book after only eight issues. At the time of his departure, Kaminski says he had storylines plotted out up to issue #50, plus he had a rough concept for a Morbius/Spider-Man/Venom project. But why has Morbius proven so popular with fans? Even the men most responsible for his popularity aren’t entirely sure why. “I felt he would be a good addition to Spider-Man’s rogues’ gallery of villains,” Thomas says. “I’m always amazed by what characters ‘stick’ with readers, and which ones don’t,” Conway says. “I never would have imagined the Punisher would be one of the most popular Marvel characters to come out of the 1970s; or that the Tarantula would have his own mini-bust collector’s item. As for Morbius, even when I wrote him, I thought of him as a more or less one-shot villain, so it’s pretty surprising to find him this popular after all this time. I guess folks just like vampires. Call it the Twilight and Dark Shadows phenomenon.” Conway and Thomas agree that Morbius is a sympathetic villain and have no problems with subsequent writers who portrayed the character in a more heroic light. “Both sides of him were always there,” Thomas says. “He always was supposed to be a fairly sympathetic character. He became more of a hero in his own series and he’s gone back and forth depending on the writer.” Conway says, “You can be a sympathetic figure who’s been dealt a bad hand by fate, and flunk the test of adversity at the same time. That pretty much describes Morbius, for me.” BRUCE BUCHANAN has been a journalist and freelance writer since 1996 and is currently working on several comic-book projects. Contact him at brucebuc@bellsouth.net or www.comicspace/brucebuchanan/.

Allan Harvey

One of the most critically lauded comics of the 1970s was the ten-issue run of Swamp Thing by writer Len Wein and artist Bernie Wrightson. But that’s not what this article is about. This is, instead, a look at what came after Wein and Wrightson, for, though one might not realize it today, Swamp Thing ran for a further 14 issues before finally being canceled in the summer of 1976. Swamp Thing debuted in a one-off tale in House of Secrets #92 (July 1971) and the issue garnered very good sales. Indeed, as Len Wein himself was later reported as having said, “House of Secrets outsold everything that month.” Confident in the knowledge they’d spawned a hit, Wein, Wrightson, and editor Joe Orlando had a problem: Success demanded the character’s return, but the story was complete in itself, with little possibility for a sequel. That they succeeded in capturing lightning in a bottle for a second time—and brilliantly— is a matter of record. The resulting ten issues remain so popular that as recently as spring of 2009 they have been reprinted in a new, lavish hardcover volume from DC. But with Swamp Thing #10 (June 1974), an exhausted Bernie [then Berni] Wrightson took his leave. As news of his departure leaked out, fans reportedly suggested Jeff Jones as a suitable replacement. According to an editorial in Swamp Thing #11 (Aug. 1974), however, the powers-that-be felt that Jones’ work would be too similar to Wrightson’s, and wanted to take the series, and its mossy star, in a slightly different direction. The artist ultimately chosen was Nestor Redondo.

THE FILIPINO INVASION Redondo was then best known as a component of the “Filipino Invasion.” Facing falling sales and rising costs, DC had looked to foreign countries such as the Philippines and South America for artists with cheaper rates. Filipino artist Tony DeZuniga had proven himself a valuable resource, and, through him, DC began to secure the services of other talents. Alex Niño, Alfredo Alcala, Gerry Talaoc, as well as Redondo, were just a few of the artists whose work filled pages in various DC books of the 1970s. Len Wein stayed on as writer, though his working method had to change. He and Wrightson had worked “Marvel-style”—plot, art, dialogue—but with Redondo living halfway around the world, Wein now had to produce a full script in advance.

Remarkable Redondo Filipino artist Nestor Redondo ably filled Bernie Wrightson’s vacated artist’s chair on DC Comics’ original Swamp Thing series. Seen here is the cover art to issue #18 (Sept. 1975), courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). TM & © DC Comics.

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Breaker, Breaker! The juggernaut Thrudvang lumbered into the pages of Swampy’s last issue, Swamp Thing #24. Double-page spread pages 8 and 9, penciled by Ernie Chan (as Ernie Chua) and inked by Fred Carrillo. Art scan courtesy of Heritage. TM & © DC Comics.

The next issue box promises a “radical new chapter in the life of Dr. Alec Holland.” One wonders how much more radical it could have been given what we’ve been witness to in the last couple of issues. “Hawkman vs. Swamp Thing” shouts a blurb, but it was not to be. Swamp Thing was canceled with #24 (Sept. 1976). A sad, ignominious end. Alec Holland would reappear the following year in Challengers of the Unknown #83 (Nov. 1977). Picking up where Swamp Thing had left off, and written by Gerry Conway, this sees Holland gradually transforming back into Swamp Thing as his brother’s “cure” wears off. Whether this is the fate Conway had originally intended, we’ll probably never know. Swamp Thing stuck around for the remainder of that short Challengers run (#83–87, Nov. 1977–July 1978), which became a kind of retirement home for defunct heroes: Deadman and Rip Hunter also appeared before the title died in the DC Implosion. The art was by a young Keith Giffen. Today these stories—essentially everything after Wein and Wrightson’s run ended—are forgotten, the events in them either retconned or ignored. While that is perhaps understandable, it’s a shame. Michelinie produced a string of solid, entertaining stories, and Redondo proved himself more than equal to the task of succeeding Wrightson. Together their work was rarely less than magnificent,

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and it deserves reprinting so that it can be seen by a whole new generation of readers. We’ll leave the last words to Michelinie: “I remember going to a party at Jack Harris’ apartment in Brooklyn during my run on Swamp Thing. I met Len Wein there and remember clearly his telling me, “People say I have a writing style, but I never realized what it was until I read your Swamp Thing.” It was meant as a compliment and I took it as such, and it’s one of the high points of my early career. “Before every issue I plotted or scripted I’d sit down and read Len’s entire ten issues. I’d absorb everything I could, and just hope I could come close with my own work. It wasn’t the same, of course; it couldn’t be. But just to hear from Len himself that I might be in the same ballpark, even if in the distant outfield, was a great relief. So, overall, I’d categorize my Swamp Thing time as intense, nerve-wracking, but ultimately satisfying.” Long considered a mockery of a man himself, ALLAN HARVEY luckily remains muck-free. He hails from the wilds of South Wales, and more of his musings can be found at www.thefifthbranch.com/ gorilladaze.

John Wells

Fan out the DC comic books that you bought in the fall of 1975 and you see the sub-groups within. The superheroes, obviously. War. Horror. The recently added sword-and-sorcery books. And Swamp Thing, Man-Bat, and the Patchwork Man (starring in House of Secrets)—the Monster line. Oh, wait … there wasn’t any monster line, at least not intentionally. However comforting the notion of a grand plan may be, the reality is that many publishing decisions owe more to chance or mundane business developments. DC’s highly touted rollout of sword-and-sorcery comics in the spring of 1975, for instance, “was a burst of activity to fill a sudden increase in the schedule,” DC president Paul Levitz explains. “I think any move towards monsters as ‘heroes’ was more a case-by-case reaction.” Up to that point, DC had had a good bit of success with its line of horror comics since the late 1960s, many of them hosted by comedic figures like Cain and Abel. Marvel Comics had taken a stab at the genre from 1972 to 1975, but a lack of staffing and the company’s natural strengths in serial fiction led to their own development of an entire sub-line of monstrous continuing characters that embraced every major horror icon, sometimes twice over. By contrast, DC’s principal venture into the monsterhero genre had been Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson’s Swamp Thing in 1972, itself based on a one-shot story in the previous year’s House of Secrets #92. By 1975, both Wein and Wrightson had left DC’s Swamp Thing, but the book remained a going concern under original editor Joe Orlando, writer David Michelinie, and artist Nestor Redondo. Indeed, there’d even been an uptick in sales, albeit one that took place while the original creative team was on the book and, as Levitz notes, “only became evident after they left because of the lag time in newsstand sales reporting.” Nonetheless, this was enough to warrant the announcement in the Amazing World of DC Comics #6 (May–June 1975) that “Swamp Thing is so hot that its [publication frequency is] shifting from seven times a year to eight!” Enter the Patchwork Man. Seen for the first (and last) time in Swamp Thing #3 (Feb.–Mar. 1973), the man once known as Gregori Arcane was a quasi-Frankenstein Monster whose body had been all but destroyed when he stepped on a land mine. Unfortunately, from Gregori’s perspective, he had a mad-scientist brother named Anton who decided to “improvise” with his sibling’s body

I Hate Meeces to Pieces! Swamp Thing spin-off the Patchwork Man rumbles with rodents in this Nestor Redondo-drawn image from the character’s second solo story. Intended for House of Secrets #141, this tale went unpublished in the US but saw print in Sweden’s Gigant #3. TM & © DC Comics.

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Classic film and television monsters, as well as created-just-for-comics creatures, constitute some of our beloved industry’s most fascinating creations! In this gallery of the gruesome, I’ve collected artwork by a few of comicdom’s finest talents including some rarely seen and never published pieces for fans who thrill to those “things” that go bump, pow, and crash in the night ... and in the day!

written and com by

piled

Jerry Boyd

(left) Four of Marvel’s mightiest heroic monsters—the Hulk, the Beast, the Thing, and Man-Thing—collide with each other (!!) and with DC’s Swamp Thing in this Jim Starlin pencil plate from the 1972 ACBA Portfolio. (above) Awww, dare we call Hot Stuff and Spooky “monsters”? Sure, why not? The “Tuff Little Ghost” and everyone’s favorite “Devil Kid” wave to us from behind a tree in the Enchanted Forest, courtesy of their longtime artist, Howie Post, who penciled this double-portrait in 2004. Hulk, Beast, and Thing © 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Spooky and Hot Stuff © 2009 Harvey Entertainment.

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(top left) Mike Ploog does film storyboards these days. Here’s an undated etching of a movie monster that hasn’t been “produced” yet (but maybe one day he will....). (above right) Ghost Rider does his best to smile in this Ploog marker convention drawing from 2007. (far left) His signature got cut off the reproduction of this late ’80s illo, but here’s Art Adams’ rendition of the unforgettable Universal Studios’ Bride of Frankenstein. (left) With his bride around, you knew that Frankenstein couldn’t be far behind! This bust of the (Karloff-like) man of many parts by Mike Mignola was done in ’06. Monster art © Mike Ploog. Ghost Rider © 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein © 2009 Universal Pictures.

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As a newly transformed creature lumbers out of the Louisiana bayou in 1972’s Swamp Thing #1, a narrative caption introduces the emerging swamp monster as “a muck-encrusted, shambling mockery of life—a twisted caricature of humanity that can only be called … Swamp Thing!” Although Alec Holland’s transformation into Swamp Thing was a new horror-fiction conceit at the time, the fear of bodily mutation and metamorphosis is endemic to the human experience. In her notes to Dante’s Inferno (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994), Nicole Pinsky observes that “the notion of Horror as we know it from fiction or the movies involves detailed, uncanny transformation of the human body…. The body may be snatched or bitten, invaded or inverted or duplicated, obscenely revived or repellently distorted, but above all it changes.” From Ovid to Dante—from Mary Shelley to Franz Kafka to Romero’s Living Dead—the fear of corporeal metamorphosis has haunted human storytelling for millennia. Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson’s best-known creation is no exception. When Alec Holland is transformed into something unbearably monstrous, the reader is compelled to both pity and fear him as the monster tries to regain his humanity. The exact opposite is true of his nemesis, Anton Arcane. If Swamp Thing’s story is a tragedy that loosely mirrors Frankenstein’s monster, then Anton Arcane represents a darker, more sadistic version of the monster’s creator: Victor Frankenstein. Swamp Thing spends much of his time trying to hold onto and recreate his humanity, while Arcane is willing to trade his humanity for the opportunity to live and rule forever. For almost four decades, Arcane has remained not just a common comic-book foil to Swamp Thing, but a dark reflection that reveals the depths of human (and inhuman) horror.

DEAL WITH THE DEVIL Although Arcane spoke his first dialogue in the last panel of Swamp Thing #1, he didn’t fully appear until the second issue of the series. Swamp Thing #2 (“The Man Who Wanted Forever”) begins as a horde of Arcane’s patchwork creations—called Un-Men— surround Swamp Thing, lull him into a trance, and sweep him out of the bayou on board a plane destined for eastern Europe. The Un-Men are only loosely men, as they seem to have been assembled from different parts of humanoid bodies. The Un-Men’s apparent ringleader, a creature named Cranius, is essentially a brain with a face sitting on top of a hand. The only other Un-Man with a significant role in this issue, Ophidian, is the serpent-like creature who hypnotizes

Mortal Enemies By the time he tangled with DC’s resilient muck-monster in Swamp Thing vol. 2 #98 (Aug. 1990), Anton Arcane had become a grotesquery in appearance and soullessness. Cover painting by John Totleben. TM & © DC Comics.

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Alex Boney

Swamp Thing for the journey across the ocean to a castle in the Balkan mountains. Arcane doesn’t appear until almost halfway through the issue, but he quickly takes control of the story. Arcane stands in stark contrast to the rest of the creatures in Swamp Thing #2. While he is clearly old and withered, he is still distinctly human. And whereas he refers to the Un-Men who inhabit his castle with him as “pets” and “experimentations,” he repeatedly calls Swamp Thing “my boy” and “my friend.” He seems at first to want to help Swamp Thing regain the human form he had once had. Arcane has discovered the secret of immorality but, as he tells Swamp Thing, “it is a secret I dare not put to use—while I still inhabit this bent and wizened form.” Through a mystical, alchemical process, Arcane offers to transfer consciousnesses: Arcane will take on the form of Swamp Thing while Swamp Thing reverts back to the form of Alec Holland. As with any deal with the devil, Arcane’s offer is too good to be true. As soon as Alec regains his human form, he learns that Arcane’s plan is little more than a revenge fantasy. As Arcane tells his Un-Men, “this malformed body means far more than immortality, my pets— it means power! Power to exact the vengeance that has gnawed at my heart for years … vengeance against the unthinking cretins who inhabit the village below … the self-centered snobs who shunned me in my youth— who scorned me and my work! In this indestructible body, I’m able to do what I’ve longed to do … I can go

down the mountain—and destroy them all!” From the very beginning, immortality is only really half of Arcane’s design. The plan is foiled when Alec reclaims the Swamp Thing body, sacrificing his humanity to save the lives of the villagers below. Arcane falls to his apparent death from a window high in his castle and, unable to cope with the loss of their master, the Un-Men jump from the same window onto the rocks below. Despite the elaborate thematic mirrors and inversions built into the first Swamp Thing/Arcane confrontation, co-creator Len Wein says he was really just trying to create a good villain that fit the genre of the book. “We never sat down and specified what sort of evil he represented,” Wein says. “I never really thought you needed to compartmentalize evil. I didn’t think it needed that much dissecting to be that disturbing. You want a mad scientist in a horror book, and I liked the idea of giving Alec the chance to become human again very early on. And Arcane fit right into that.”

Oh, the Humanity! (left) Anton Arcane offers to make a man out of our beleaguered bog beast on page 12 of 1972’s Swamp Thing #2. (right) In the next issue, Aracane’s brother Gregori’s life is “saved” as he becomes the Patchwork Man. Art by Bernie Wrightson.

ARCANE, FAMILY MAN Arcane also provided a way to establish a sense of continuity for the series as a whole. Arcane left behind two family members who would play prominent roles in Swamp Thing’s life for years to come. Swamp Thing #3, entitled “The Patchwork Man,” reveals that Arcane had “saved” his own brother, Gregori Arcane, after a land mine accident years earlier. In a twisted act of fraternal salvation, Arcane recreated Gregori as one of his Un-Men

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“Follow me … for I am The Phantom Stranger!” So said the logo of one hep early-’70s DC series. And at least one character took those words to heart—Dr. Terrence Thirteen, professional Ghost-Breaker. Yes, when Doc 13 wasn’t shadowing the spookily garbed supernatural superhero around in the book’s feature stories, he followed him as the star of his own occultish backup feature. BACK ISSUE decided to debunk the debunker by hunting down the only men who could reveal what made Dr. Terry and Marie Thirteen tick—Phantom Stranger’s writers.

A DOCTOR OF DATA The year 1951 was quite a year for entertainment: The King and I premiered on Broadway; Bedtime for Bonzo, starring future US President Ronald Reagan, hit the silver screen; and CBS presented the first color TV broadcast … viewed only by network executives since color TV sets had yet to be introduced to the American public. In the world of comics, Osamu Tezuka, father of manga, introduced his most famous creation, Astro Boy. On a lesser note, it was also the year that saw the haphazard creation of DC Comics’ protagonist Dr. Terrence Thirteen, a parapsychologist and investigator of reported supernatural activity. Thirteen was an orphan of a character, created by artist Leonard Starr and an uncredited writer to replace the “Captain Compass” feature. Imagine a less bumbling, more intense Clark Kent and you get the vibe of this neurotic paranormal investigator. The character’s first published appearance arrived in Star Spangled Comics #122 (Nov. 1951), where he toplined his own feature through #130 (July 1952). For generations, the Thirteen family’s less-savvy neighbors had hated and feared them, suspecting supernatural goings-on—but in reality, the Thirteens were thoroughly devoted to science and rationality. Thus, when the family patriarch died and appeared to come back in spirit, son Terry Thirteen, with his wife, Marie, set out to dispel the occurrence. That set the tone for the series, in which the married Thirteens investigated ostensibly occult-like situations, only to arrive at some mundane explanation. Following his Star Spangled run, Dr. Thirteen’s next appearance did not arrive until nearly 18 years later when the character turned up in Showcase #80 (Feb. 1969) as a supporting character in a Phantom Stranger story. When the Stranger received his own series that year, Dr. Thirteen made the leap as the character’s nemesis.

PHANTOM GETS A FOIL The Phantom Stranger was one “weird hero” (see BACK ISSUE #15 for proof!). Dressed like a cross between the Spirit and the Phantom of the Opera, the Stranger operated somewhere between the passivity of the Watcher, old radio man-of-mystery the Whistler, and the crime-busting heroics of The Shadow. More often than not, he would merely materialize and disappear, long enough to forewarn characters of the consequences of their actions. Like a buttinsky Rod Serling, he might occasionally interfere.

“I Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts”… …or monsters, or demons, felt DC’s resident Ghost-Breaker Dr. Terrence Thirteen, seen in the foreground in this detail from page 13 of Phantom Stranger #3. The headshot of the Stranger himself came from the character’s first issue. Art by Bill Draut. TM & © DC Comics.

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Michael Aushenk

Dr. Thirteen “No. 1” The Ghost-Breaker bumped the Boy Wonder to grab the cover of Star Spangled Comics #122 (Nov. 1951), his first appearance. TM & © DC Comics.

All of this did much to raise the ire of Dr. Thirteen, a skeptic who did not believe in the supernatural and, least of all, believed that the Stranger was truly a phantom. He took to accusing the Stranger of perpetrating “cheap parlor tricks!” or ”smokes and mirrors!” to make it appear that he was ghostly. And off they went, bickering like an old married couple (yes, Doc 13 and the Stranger, not Terry and Marie)! So, whose idea was it to pit Thirteen against the Stranger as comic relief? “It was editor Joe Orlando who gave me this setup,” explains Mike Friedrich, who wrote fresh wraparound material for the first three issues, which relied heavily on old reprints written by John Broome and others. Friedrich admits that he was not comfortable with the premise. “I was handed archive copies of the early-1950s stories of both characters,” recalls Friedrich. “In the Mike Friedrich original, Dr. 13 was a serious ‘ghost-buster’ and we were reprinting those stories as well. So to run him up against Phantom Stranger meant that Dr. 13 had to be treated as a fool, since we readers knew that Phantom Stranger really is a supernatural being. I didn’t know how to maintain Dr. 13’s integrity in this situation. In retrospect, it would have been better to have created a new foil for Phantom Stranger, but I wasn’t mature enough as a writer or as a person to have suggested that.”

The idiosyncratic scribe was barely an adult when he received the assignment, which appears to have been a bone that the DC editors threw to a young, hungry writer. “I had been writing for about a year,” Friedrich tells BACK ISSUE. “I was 19 years old and writing for DC during my college summer break. I had a contract with them that guaranteed me a certain amount of work, so editorial director Carmine Infantino spread me around to the different editors. Joe Orlando had just come into the company on staff and Carmine asked Joe to give me something to do. Phantom Stranger is what he came up with. So it was a chance to work on something different. It was challenging to me because I was a superhero fan at the time and didn’t have the same kind of visceral engagement with other story genres. “I was writing a lot of different things that summer,” Friedrich reminisces. “I remember a fun issue of Teen Titans, drawn by Gil Kane and Wally Wood, for Dick Giordano; “Batgirl” (also by Kane) for Detective Comics, for Julie Schwartz; an issue of The Flash, also for Schwartz; an issue of Challengers of the Unknown, for Murray Boltinoff; and a spoof on Gil Kane, drawn unwittingly by Kane himself, for House of Mystery, for Joe Orlando.” Writing on Phantom Stranger often meant working with phantom artists. Friedrich: “I was writing full scripts, so I didn’t collaborate with the artist at all. I saw the artwork for the first time when it appeared in print.” For some, plumbing new contexts from old scripts might have been daunting. Not for Friedrich: “Actually, it was a little easier for me to think about how to connect the old material into the present than it would have been to think of new stories from scratch, because going into it I had so little awareness of both Phantom Stranger and Dr. 13.” Friedrich made the most of it, adding flare to early stories such as “Defeat the Dragon Curse … or Die.” “Creatively, I think Phantom Stranger was one of my weaker comic-writing experiences,” says the often self-critical Friedrich. “I was relieved when I returned to college and lost the assignment.”

SCIENCE VS. SUPERSTITION It was a familiar scene. A character in crisis. The Phantom Stranger— reminiscent of Steve Ditko’s snappily dressed, straight-laced anti-heroes and perhaps an echo of the Mysterious Traveler—materialized as an issue’s character arrived at the crossroads of making a decision that could detour his or her fate for the worse. Enter the Thirteens to get ensnared in the proceedings. Sometimes Marie was kidnapped. Once Terry was kidnapped. By the end of the story, after the Phantom Stranger has saved the day, Thirteen thanks the mysterious wraith by threatening to expose him, once and for all, as the sham he is! What an ingrate, that Terry Thirteen! As Phantom Stranger hit its stride, writers Bob Kanigher, Dennis O’Neil, and Gerry Conway contributed to this formula. And, for at least one series scribe, this cocktail of cynic vs. spook was a gas! “I loved writing those stories,” Conway tells BACK ISSUE. “They were, I believe, my first series-character work (not counting the ‘bookend’ Abel introductions I did for House of Secrets), and I had a great deal of fun putting all of those characters together.” Conway is no slouch in the Gerry Conway pantheon of Bronze Age writers.

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the chicken scratch. Tony scrunched his face in mock despair and breathed a sigh of relief that he didn’t have to actually work from the sketch sitting in front of us.” Indeed, Tony revealed that he wound up using a light board to capture Carmine’s gesture and please the sometimes-prickly DC editorial director (whom he would ink years later on Spider-Woman #3). Tony didn’t let us leave empty-handed, either. Jose and I both walked away with a copy of his latest self-published pinup portfolio.

Once in a while, a BACK ISSUE reporter has to take a bullet for his publication. Luckily, this was not the case, as Tina’s delectable cooking had Jose and I heaping seconds and thirds onto our plates. After dessert––a tasty fruit gelatin from a local Mexican bakery, flanked by a plate of pastries––Tony shared his insights into the decline of the Filipino comic-book industry. We conversed about Tony’s great Filipino peers, including the mighty Gerry Talaoc, whose surname, Tina revealed, phonetically means a rooster’s “cock-a-doodle-doo” sound (the actual word is spelled “tilaok”). Tony gushed over Antonio Velasquez, a Filipino artist who influenced many of the Philippines’ Komiks movement, including Nestor Redondo and Alfredo Alcala. Tony recalled how he got the inspiration for Jonah Hex’s disfigured face design after seeing a medical illustration, exposing the various layers of the human anatomy, at a doctor’s office. Tony also pulled out laminated slicks of the BACK ISSUE #12 Jonah Hex-related interview with him. He expressed how he appreciated working on Hex with Albano, a master cartoonist in his own right, who provided Tony with brilliantly fleshed-out full thumbnails to work from. [Editor’s note: Jonah Hex is the top gun in our upcoming “Wild West” issue, BACK ISSUE #42.] “Another memorable moment was when Tina began pulling out Tony’s artwork,” Cabrera says. “It was amazing to see artwork from a legend that had never been gazed upon by the public. Not only is Tony a great comic-book artist but an amazing portraitist.” After Tina displayed several pencil-and-charcoal sketches of drawing-class models, Tina pulled out a few of these framed DeZuniga pieces, as well as some interesting fantasy art by Chinese artists. I finally asked Tina, as she approached with a framed work with its back facing us, if Tony ever sketches her. “Tony told of his run-ins and collaborations with some of the greats in the business,” Cabrera says. “My favorite moment was when he went into full role-playing mode, pulling out a Sharpie and a piece of paper and mimicking the way Carmine Infantino would quickly sketch a design or some concept for a cover. Tony stated that it was challenging trying to figure out what Carmine wanted from

Many writers and artists are drawn to Los Angeles, and there’s a reason why. It’s nights such as these, when the planets align to make for a magical (and traffic-free!) experience. Artists such as Tony often toil in isolation to perfect their craft. We got the sense that he appreciated a night of socializing with a couple of younger, lessaccomplished cartoonists lapping up his anecdotes (and his wife’s cooking). Just another meal for Tony and Tina, perhaps … but an evening that Jose and I will never forget. As we were about to call it a night, Tina showed us the Karaoke machine she had rescued from her Stockton restaurant. When Tina and Tony learned that we occasionally hit the Karaoke bar with our friends, the DeZunigas lit up. “Who knew that Tony liked to Karaoke,” Cabrera exclaims. “Can’t wait to get him to join us on Karaoke Wednesdays.”

(top) Tina’s cute niece, Marisol, may not be much of a comics reader, but she sure knows a good meal when she sees it. (right) Here’s a recent masterpiece from Tony DeZuniga: a 2009 painting of Jonah Hex, a monster in his own right (the man ain’t purty). Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). (top right) Lo and behold, Tina turned the framed picture around to reveal… a portrait of Tina drawn by her husband. (Aawwww!) TM & © DC Comics.

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Ian Millsted

In the early to mid-1970s, while Marvel was launching new horror series like Tomb of Dracula, Werewolf by Night, and Man-Thing, the company also reprinted many short monster stories from the 1950s and early 1960s in titles like Monsters on the Prowl and Where Monsters Dwell. One short-lived series combined the tone of those short stories with the ongoing serial format that Marvel had successfully developed by 1973. “It! The Living Colossus” ran for only four issues of Astonishing Tales (#21–24). The series was written by Tony Isabella fresh from the just-canceled Doc Savage, with artwork from Dick Ayers who had worked on many of the original monster stories. Tony and Dick kindly dredged the dark recesses of their memories for us. – Ian Millsted IAN MILLSTED: Is it true that the series came about because Stan Lee liked the idea of a series called “It”? TONY ISABELLA: The series came about because Supernatural Thrillers #1, which featured an adaptation of Theodore Sturgeon’s “It!”—the granddaddy of all swamp monster stories—sold very well. So Stan and Roy [Thomas] felt we should do a book called “It!” The problem was that Marvel already had a swamp monster series in Man-Thing. So we had to come up with a different type of monster to star in our new “It” series. MILLSTED: How did each of you become involved in the series? ISABELLA: Roy wanted to give me a series to write and knew I was a monster-movie fan. He asked for my input on our new “It,” and that’s when I learned the issues of Monsters on the Prowl which reprinted the original Colossus stories had sold better than other issues of the title. I pitched him on the new “It” being a continuation of those stories, though; in my original pitch, the specialeffects man hero of the second Colossus story had married his actress sweetheart and already started a family with her. Any member of the family would have been able to activate and control the Colossus. Roy steered me to the more dramatic premise of the hero being paralyzed.

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In 1974, Marvel Comics Group introduced a bold new monster-hero to the readers of Strange Tales. Subtitled “The Thing That Walks Like a Man,” the character was a big, brutish, superpowered man of stone. Sound familiar? But in fact, this “thing” had been around … for about 500 years. The bloodline of Frankenstein, Superman, Captain America and the original Human Torch (both labcreated supermen), and iconic Marvel monster-heroes such as Hulk, Tales of the Zombie’s Simon Garth, and, yes, even the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed Thing, harkens back to the Jewish folk tale about the all-powerful stone automaton the Golem. The Eastern European legend had survived via generations of Ashkenazi Jews, right down to their descendants, who included the Jewish superhero creators that dominated comics’ Golden and Silver Ages. So it was inevitable that by the ’70s, after decades chronicling the adventures of popular characters that may as well be “crypto-Golems,” Marvel finally released its official take on the medieval legend. Strange Tales featuring the Golem made its splashy debut in #174 (June 1974). Four issues later, the character was Golem, Golem, gone! So, what happened? Let’s voyage back in time and find out…

BEFORE FRANKENSTEIN, SUPERMAN, THING, AND HULK… “Oh, dreidel, dreidel, dreidel! I made it out of clay…” goes the old Chanukah song. But back in the 16th century, one Rabbi Loew topped that by a country mile when he turned a giant slab of clay into the Golem. The year is 1580 A.D. The place is Prague. There are many variations of this old story. One version, from The Prague Golem: Jewish Stories of the Ghetto, recounts how “a priest called Thaddeus—a fanatical anti-Semite— tried again to … bring about discord and … evoke new superstitious accusations of blood rituals. Rabbi Loew soon learned about it and raised a question ‘upwards’ in his dream to find a solution to the problem how he should fight against the evil enemy. He received the following answer: ‘You shall create Golem from clay and may the malicious antiSemitic mob be destroyed.’ “Rabbi Loew interpreted the line of strange words so that he should create a living body from clay with the aide of the letters provided from heaven. He called for Jizchak ben Simson, his son-in-law, and for a disciple of his, Jacob ben Chajim Sasson, the Levite, and entrusted them with the mystery of how a Golem should be created. “…Together we shall create Golem from the fourth element which is the earth.”

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Reciting the Zirufim, the trio said: “And the Lord formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Kazam! Loew had an obedient Golem on his hands. “We have created you from a lump of clay. Your mission is to protect the Jews from persecutions. Your name will be Josef and you will live in the Rabbi’s house. Josef, you must obey my commands no matter when and where I might send you…’ Josef nodded his head…” Loew prohibited the people in the house to use Golem for private purposes. One day, after Loew forgets to give Josef his daily chores, his clay creation (not exactly Gumby) is “found rampaging around the Jewish town like a madman, he wanted to demolish everything that got in his way. His inactivity had made him both bored and angry.” Luckily, there’s a failsafe: the Hebrew word emeth (“truth”) etched across the statue’s forehead. Rub out the first character on his forehead and it spells meth, which spells “death” for the Golem, who becomes recumbent again. Michael Chabon, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 2000 novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, drew the connection explicit between the Golem and the creators of the first costumed superhero Siegel and Shuster (who inspired the fictional Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay, as did Joe Simon and Jack Kirby). Using the Prague Golem as the basis for this novel’s B-plot, Chabon draws an analogy between the powerful protector and Kavalier & Clay’s creation, the Escapist, a superhero devised during the chaos of World War II as the Jewish people were rendered powerless against the Nazis’ wrath. After all, Superman, Batman, Human Torch, the Spirit, and other Golden Age comic-book characters—as well as scores of Marvel characters (Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer, Hulk, X-Men, and, in part, Spider-Man, Daredevil, and Iron Man)—were “Jewish” by virtue of their creators. These cartoonists may not have been religious per se, but they were culturally Jewish. No matter their religiosity, Jews are first and foremost a race, with Judaism the biological and cultural connector of a nomadic people scattered around the world over millennia. Marvel’s architects—Stan Lee (nee Stanley Lieber) and Jack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg), as well as publisher Martin Goodman—were the driving engine of the comic-book renaissance we now call the Marvel Age. The American comic-book industry had always been a magnet for immigrants—Italian, Irish, Asian—and Jewish creators had sizable roles in the birth and rebirth of the superhero, romance, humor, and other genres, from Siegel and Shuster to Will Eisner to the MAD bullpen—William Gaines, Harvey Kurtzman, Als Feldstein and Jaffe, Bernie Krigstein. Chabon in Kavalier & Clay, and Julius Feiffer before him in his superhero myth analysis The Great Comic Book Heroes, made the case that it’s no coincidence that original superhero Superman was portrayed as an outsider, and forced to assume a new alias to try to blend into the American mainstream … much as Jewish immigrants have in their quest to assimilate.

MARVEL MAKES A GOLEM It had to happen. Marvel was first among comics publishers to feature black superheroes—and villains. Marvel was first to recognize the women’s movement in comics with characters like the Black Widow. And now, in this issue of ST, we’re proud to introduce the comics’ first Jewish monster-hero. – A “Special Bullpen Note” touting this “notexactly-original … yet highly innovative feature.” First published in 1951 as a horror comics anthology, Strange Tales, by 1970, had morphed into something of a superhero experiment—a launchpad for new characters/concepts. Editor Roy Thomas, writer Len Wein, and artist John Buscema debuted Golem following the exit of another Thomas-created, Wein-scripted character, Brother Voodoo. “I have this feeling that it was my idea to do the Golem because I had done it in The Hulk,” says Thomas. Monsters Issue

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